It was always going to be a recipe for disaster. A woman who never held a job for longer than 18 months (I have attention span issues), couldn’t manage to keep her bedroom in the share house tidy, and still called her mum for a loan when the electricity bill was due. This is the woman who was about to give birth. To a CHILD. A tiny, dependent creature who was going to require some pretty full-on attention for the next 18 YEARS!

What followed was a series of trial and error experiences filled with terror and joy.

Somehow we muddled through. Every new stage of development an exercise in confusion and adaptation. Sleeping routines (or lack thereof), breastfeeding (or not), solids, teething, toilet training, toddler tantrums, schoolyard dramas, learning challenges, it was a new issue every couple of months. Just when you were patting yourself on the back for having mastered one issue the little darling would wake up the next day A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT PERSON WITH A WHOLE NEW SET OF PROBLEMS!

Every day I seemed to making really important decisions from a fog of tiredness and confusion. Looking back it’s amazing to consider that I managed to get it right at least some of the time!

Now we are in the middle of the teenage years with a whole new set of considerations, driving lessons, curfews, independence, subject choices, future careers, how much spending money do we dish out? As usual, we are putting forward our confident face of “we are parents, we know what we are doing”, when in fact we have no bloody idea. We will continue to bluff our way through as we have always done.

To those just embarking on the mothering journey. Good luck. It’s the hardest thing you will ever do in your life. But it’s also the most rewarding.

I’m going to try to take part in the A to Z Challenge Blog Hop this month. That means each day a post related to a letter of the alphabet.